Question

Consider this scenario. I have some business logic that now and then will be required to write to a log.

interface ILogger
{
    void Log(string stuff);
}

interface IDependency
{
    string GetInfo();
}

class MyBusinessObject
{
    private IDependency _dependency;

    public MyBusinessObject(IDependency dependency)
    {
        _dependency = dependency;
    }

    public string DoSomething(string input)
    {
        // Process input
        var info = _dependency.GetInfo();
        var intermediateResult = PerformInterestingStuff(input, info);

        if (intermediateResult== "SomethingWeNeedToLog")
        {
            // How do I get to the ILogger-interface?
        }

        var result = PerformSomethingElse(intermediateResult);

        return result;
    }
}

How would you get the ILogger interface? I see two main possibilities;

1. Pass it using Dependency Injection on the constructor.
2. Get it via a singleton Service Locator.

Which method would you prefer, and why? Or is there an even better pattern?

Update:
Note that I don’t need to log ALL method calls. I only want to log a few (rare) events that may or may not occur within my method.

Answer 1

I personally do a mixture of both.

Here are my conventions:

• From a static context – Service Location
• From an instance context – Dependency Injection

I feel this gives me the right balance of testability. I find it a little harder to setup tests against classes that use Service Location than use DI, so this is why Service Location ends up being the exception rather than the rule. I’m consistent in its use, though, so it’s not hard to remember what type of test I need to write.

Some have raised the concern that DI tends to clutter constructors. I don’t feel this is a problem, but if you feel this way, there are a number of alternatives that use DI, but avoid constructor parameters. Here is a list of Ninject’s DI methods:
http://ninject.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Injection%20Patterns

You’ll find that most Inversion of Control containers have the same features as Ninject. I chose to show Ninject because they have the most concise samples.

Hopefully this is helpful.

Edit: To be clear, I use Unity and Common Service Locator. I have a singleton instance of my Unity container for DI and my implementation of IServiceLocator is simply a wrapper around that singleton Unity container. This way I don’t have to do any type mappings twice or anything like that.

I also don’t find AOP to be particularly helpful beyond tracing. I like manual logging better simply for its clarity. I know that most AOP logging frameworks are capable of both, but I don’t need the former (AOP’s bread and butter) most of the time. This is just personal preference, of course.